occasionally give a portion of your worldly substance to the service of God, remember that you are the only guides of these destitute orphans, who without your assistance must be left to make their way through a wicked world in poverty and ignorance. Let me conjure you to give to them according to the measure of happiness that God has given to you, and. as you wish a continuance of it, be generous in the discharge of your duty, shield their tender years from the horrors of want and the entanglements of vice. The prayers of the faithful departed, whose last pangs were sharpened by a parent's fondness, will ascend to the throne of the Almighty, and bring down the richest blessings on those who shelter their little orphans from cold and nakedness, from hunger and thirst, and lead them through the paths of religion and virtue. Shew your gratitude to that God, whose equal power might, had he so pleased, have given you the trial of adversity.

Ye happy fathers of growing families, to whose future welfare you look forward with the throb of solicitude, be merciful to these babes, who have no fathers to provide for them, or steer their course through the dark journey of life. Ye mothers, whose bosoms experience the united sensibilities of nature, whose first steps when you return home will be into the nursery to see your own children, consider, when you fold them to your bosoms, how much it will sweeten the embrace, to reflect, that you have faithfully contributed to the protection of these little ones, who have no mothers to caress them. It is from you

I certainly expect most help this day; your hearts are well versed in the numberless necessities of infancy, therefore by every kind solicitude you are bound to make it the beloved object

of your charity. And you, my youthful hearers, who have lived under the protecting wings of tender parents, shew by your charity this day, a sense of those duties they have taught you, by devoting a part of what you possess, to these poor children, who have no house to call their own, no clothes to screen them from the inclemency of the season, no earthly hope, but the humanity of their benevolent fellow-creatures. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, and he will never forget you in your old age. I fear I have omitted to appeal as much as I ought to your feelings, to your humanity: however, the objects for whom I plead are before you; the sight of them, together with the tenderness of your own hearts, will, I hope in God, supply this deficiency. I shall therefore detain you no longer, than to beseech that the tremendous Judge of the living and the dead (who has declared that all our good works without charity are of no avail, and that on the last day charity and its contrasted vice shall form the criterion of our final doom) may grant that, by your charity this day, you may be merciful to yourselves, by being merciful to these orphans. Amen.

This Sermon was preached in Townsend-street Chapel in the year 1806.-The Collection amounted to near £500.

SERMON XIX.

PASSION SUNDAY.

That the Blood of Christ cleanses us from Sin.

For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled to the cleansing of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Holy Ghost offered himself without spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Heb. ix. 13, 14.

SAINT Paul, in the foregoing part of this day's epistle, shewing how the great anniversary sacrifice of expiation was a type of Christ, proceeds to compare the blood of those beasts, which were offered up in it, with the blood of Christ: for whereas, in the feast of expiation, the high priest offered up the blood of bulls and goats, Christ offered up himself. The high priest was a sinner, and offered up those sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people; but Christ offered up himself without spot, and in him was offered the blood of "the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world."*

*John i. 29.

The design of the apostle, in this day's epistle, is to compare the sacrifices of the old law, as to their power and efficacy, with the sacrifice of the blood of Christ. The blood of the sacrifices of the old law could cleanse men only from legal impurities, such as were contracted by touching a dead body, eating meat that was forbidden by the law, drinking out of an unclean vessel, and the like; that the blood of Christ cleanses the conscience, and washes away the guilt and pollutions of the soul. "For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled to the cleansing of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Holy Ghost offered himself without spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living 'God?" And by dead works is meant such sins as men have been guilty of in the former course of their lives, as appears by its opposition to that legal uncleanness which men had actually contracted. So that the sense is this: the blood of Christ hath washed away the guilt of those sins you committed in the former course of your lives, and so put you in a state of grace to serve the living God.

In discoursing on these words, before I speak more particularly of the virtue and power of the blood of Christ, it will be necessary to observe two things: first, that it was an opinion prevailing among all nations, that the washing of the body was necessary to take away the guilt of sin, and that the custom of religious washing with water, or sprinkling with blood, referred to the washing away of sin by the blood of Christ.

As to the first, it is very plain, that the cleansing of the body is a very obvious emblem of the innocence of the mind, and indeed the only way

we have of raising any image of it in this life; for we do not sufficiently comprehend how much sin pollutes the soul, nor how much virtue beautifies it. The horrid deformity of guilt, and the lovely beauty of virtue and innocence, the alteration they make in the soul for the better or the worse, will not be fully seen, till the great change at the resurrection, when all the beauties and deformities of the soul shall be as discernible as those of the body are now: therefore it was very natural for men to adopt this custom of washing, whenever they had any occasion to manifest and declare their innocence? as Pilate did when he washed his hands, and declared himself innocent of the blood of Christ. But this could not be the reason of that washing which was occasioned by a sense of sin; this was not to manifest their innocence, but to wash away their guilt; and this. was the reason why, both among Jews and heathens, most of their sacrifices were attended with solemn washings. The Jews were enjoined a great variety of them; their priests and their people were cleansed and consecrated by washing; all manner of legal uncleanness was purged and purified by it; and the reason of this washing is expressed, that they might be holy and accept able to God; and if they omitted these washings after any breach of the law, or any contracted uncleanness, it is said, "they shall bear their iniquity."*

And so likewise the blood of their sacrifices was sprinkled on the people, as particularly in that sacrifice instanced in the nineteenth verse of this day's epistle, where it is said, "that when every commandment of the law had been read by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of

*Lev. xvii. 16.